Islamic Thought and Literature III: Environmental History of the Modern Middle East

Undergraduate / Graduate

What exactly is the land we call the Middle East? Is it a "Fertile Crescent," a paradisaical land of milk and honey? Or is it a barren place requiring special effort to "make the desert bloom"? The Middle East presents a unique environmental context as an arid zone that is nevertheless rich in agricultural and natural resources. It is also a region that has been the focus of intensive imperial, colonial, and settler-colonial projects in the modern era. How were Ottoman, French, British, American, and Zionist efforts to control this land shaped by environmental factors - imagined or real - and how did they in turn shape the environment they sought to control? In this course we will chart the development of these colonial and imperial projects, and resistance to them, across the history of the modern Middle East. We will then engage with recent work in Middle Eastern environmental history to collectively interpret these projects through the lens of their environmental entanglements. No prior knowledge of the region is assumed; all materials in English.